Mr. K6's 6950 -> 7970 Overclocking Review

[MrK6]

Over at Guru3d, I saw that Unwinder posted something along those lines a couple of times (he seems tired of repeating himself :biggrin:

"7970 VRM are equipped with true voltage sensors, allowing to measure actual voltages on GPU instead of just shouwing you target values like the majority of graphics cards, Afterburner shows readings from voltage SENSOR, currently available GPU-Z is showing target volgtage only."

That could be the issue?

Here's my thread over there, and he repeated himself once more : http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4216598#post4216598 (also why I suggested he throw a footnote in the release notes)

Hey Mrk6, I'm sure you covered this already (I recall you said silent @ 20% Fan speed or something of the sort), but for someone who is now experiencing that dread fan noise on the HD 5870 - how much more improved is the reference fan? Just curious.

What were your temps on air and how loud would you say that the fan got? I'm just debating going with another reference cooler or holding out for more options in the custom cooler department. My intentions are run it OC'ed. Thanks in advance.

As blower designs go, it's the best yet. That said, it isn't anywhere near quiet and if you aren't using headphones, I think you'd be annoyed at 100% load while overclocked, which typically gives ~50% fan speed. However, I'm very much into silent computing and my water setup is dead silent. I'll throw up the videos I made of the fan levels so you can get an idea. Don't get me wrong either, it's the best fan yet, much better than the 5870's, and most of the noise is simply air moving.

This makes a lot of sense. Afterburner may simply be incompatible with some aspect of the XFX card at this point. Since it's not a widespread problem, it could be something specific. It might be worth shooting an e-mail to the author of Afterburner - I've actually had an e-mail exchange with him before when I found a conflict between Afterburner and HW Monitor regarding voltage monitoring and control - I was getting huge spikes (to 1.6v) when both programs were polling information simultaneously (ironic that it's a similar issue, huh?).

I'll PM his contact info.

Thanks a ton, replied. That's why I made the thread over at Guru3D, and sure enough he responded. :thumbsup:

 

[MrK6]

Dumb question but have you checked to make sure Powertune is at +20%?

Always :thumbsup:.

 

[Termie]

Here's my thread over there, and he repeated himself once more : http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4216598#post4216598 (also why I suggested he throw a footnote in the release notes)

As blower designs go, it's the best yet. That said, it isn't anywhere near quiet and if you aren't using headphones, I think you'd be annoyed at 100% load while overclocked, which typically gives ~50% fan speed. However, I'm very much into silent computing and my water setup is dead silent. I'll throw up the videos I made of the fan levels so you can get an idea. Don't get me wrong either, it's the best fan yet, much better than the 5870's, and most of the noise is simply air moving.
Thanks a ton, replied. That's why I made the thread over at Guru3D, and sure enough he responded. :thumbsup:

LOL, good to see he's responsive, although it looks like you might not have made a new friend.

I always wonder why Afterburner isn't exclusive to MSI cards - he must get a ton of questions from all of us freeriders!

 

[Gothgar]

Interested in seeing the rest of this. Good work, we appreciate the work :thumbsup:

 

[MrK6]

LOL, good to see he's responsive, although it looks like you might not have made a new friend.

I always wonder why Afterburner isn't exclusive to MSI cards - he must get a ton of questions from all of us freeriders!

Well, supposedly he write the program to support only reference models and MSI custom models, so I guess we should thank the concept of reference models :thumbsup:. Still though, I completely understand all the hoops he makes advanced users jump through as I'm sure it filters out a lot of the timesinks that come from dealing with the public/noobs in general.

Interested in seeing the rest of this. Good work, we appreciate the work :thumbsup:

My pleasure, glad it's helpful. :thumbsup:

Also, here are the videos of the 7970's stock cooling:

7970 @ 100% fan speed
7970 @ 50% fan speed

Enjoy :thumbsup:

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Well, supposedly he write the program to support only reference models and MSI custom models, so I guess we should thank the concept of reference models :thumbsup:. Still though, I completely understand all the hoops he makes advanced users jump through as I'm sure it filters out a lot of the timesinks that come from dealing with the public/noobs in general.


My pleasure, glad it's helpful. :thumbsup:

Also, here are the videos of the 7970's stock cooling:

7970 @ 100% fan speed
7970 @ 50% fan speed

Enjoy :thumbsup:

My 5870 sounds like 50% at idle....

It's the asus blower model that was supposed to have a beefier heatsink and fan. It's not quiet at all.

 

[chimaxi83]

Custom cards will most likely change any over volting issues, hopefully lol

 

[WelshBloke]

LOL, good to see he's responsive, although it looks like you might not have made a new friend.

I always wonder why Afterburner isn't exclusive to MSI cards - he must get a ton of questions from all of us freeriders!

Actually for Unwinder that looked very friendly!


Anyway nice thread OP. :thumbsup:

 

[realjetavenger]

Well, supposedly he write the program to support only reference models and MSI custom models, so I guess we should thank the concept of reference models :thumbsup:. Still though, I completely understand all the hoops he makes advanced users jump through as I'm sure it filters out a lot of the timesinks that come from dealing with the public/noobs in general.


My pleasure, glad it's helpful. :thumbsup:

Also, here are the videos of the 7970's stock cooling:

7970 @ 100% fan speed
7970 @ 50% fan speed

Enjoy :thumbsup:

Thanks for posting the vid.
Wow. At 100% that is just horrific
Glad it won't have to run that fast, well, pretty much ever. 50% didn't seem bad at all. For those not on wc, that is certainly tolerable.
Will be interesting to see (hear) the custom cooling solutions. Hopefully, taking a wait and see attitude won't bite me in the you know where as far as supply and price go.

 

[MrK6]

My 5870 sounds like 50% at idle....

It's the asus blower model that was supposed to have a beefier heatsink and fan. It's not quiet at all.

Sound is just as much about quality as it is about actual pressure. This is the smoothest Radeon yet IMO, and they never sacrificed performance.

Custom cards will most likely change any over volting issues, hopefully lol

Hopefully. If it turns out this card can't/won't clock, I'll grab a refresh or Kepler if they show more certain promise :thumbsup:.

Actually for Unwinder that looked very friendly!
Anyway nice thread OP. :thumbsup:

Lol, yep, he's a grumpy fellow alright. I can't imagine the grief he gets all the time from noobs/hacks/companies/etc. That's why I suggested he open it up a bit and share the load, but, not my place :thumbsup:.

Thanks for posting the vid.
Wow. At 100% that is just horrific
Glad it won't have to run that fast, well, pretty much ever. 50% didn't seem bad at all. For those not on wc, that is certainly tolerable.
Will be interesting to see (hear) the custom cooling solutions. Hopefully, taking a wait and see attitude won't bite me in the you know where as far as supply and price go.

Yep, 100% = vacuum cleaner, although my god does it push air. Also, 50% is the max, most of the time it's hovering below that.

For those interested, vGPU mods have been posted (found at XtremeSystems myself): http://kingpincooling.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1553

Nothing I'm going to undertake myself until I'm certain it's the only way to get some juice to this thing.

 

[MrK6]

So I've been fiddling around with this card for the greater part of the evening and it's just a no go. Before I take this card apart to water cool I think I'm just going to cut my losses. I've decided that this kind of effort and time is more than the $550 I spent on the card, so it's going back to NCIXUS, 15% restocking fees or whatever be damned. I think the final straw was when I went to XFX's site to register and found that this particular model doesn't even have a double lifetime warranty. I ordered a Gigabyte 7970 off of Newegg, which my was original plan, and that will be here Friday so I can continue.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Be careful, AMD may have cherry picked for reviews.

Seem you're not the only one whose gotten a "dud".

 

[Termie]

So I've been fiddling around with this card for the greater part of the evening and it's just a no go. Before I take this card apart to water cool I think I'm just going to cut my losses. I've decided that this kind of effort and time is more than the $550 I spent on the card, so it's going back to NCIXUS, 15% restocking fees or whatever be damned. I think the final straw was when I went to XFX's site to register and found that this particular model doesn't even have a double lifetime warranty. I ordered a Gigabyte 7970 off of Newegg, which my was original plan, and that will be here Friday so I can continue.

I saw a one-star review on Newegg about XFX and how not all 7970s have lifetime warranties. Wondered if the guy was on crack. Get's it's more that XFX's policy is a crock. If they aren't offering lifetime warranties on all 7970s, I'd just ditch them for a better brand from here on out...hope your Gigabyte works better.

 

[badb0y]

Be careful, AMD may have cherry picked for reviews.

Seem you're not the only one whose gotten a "dud".

People at [H] have a user overclocking thread going on and on 3 pages almost every single person has hit 1000+ mhz lol.

Source:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1665293&page=3

 

[BallaTheFeared]

1000+ wasn't what people were looking forward to.

They were looking forward to a chip that responded to voltage allowing greater clocks than the 1125 every reviewer seemed to get on stock voltage.

 

[badb0y]

1000+ wasn't what people were looking forward to.

They were looking forward to a chip that responded to voltage allowing greater clocks than the 1125 every reviewer seemed to get on stock voltage.

With voltage I doubt there will be a chip that won't reach 1200. Most of these overclocks are on stock voltage which is pretty freaking good. The only other recent card that overclocked this well was the GTX 460 I believe.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

From MrK

Same readings here. My Corsair is pretty beefy and at maximum I'm only pulling ~450W from the wall (which is probably only ~360W actual load due to the age of this PSU), but that's the thing - the power usage increases by close to 100W, but it does not pay off in the overclock. At stock volts I can run 1125MHz all day, and pumping the voltage up to 1.3V can't even get me to 1175MHz stably. I've never had a video card hit a wall like that. I'll be throwing this thing on water later today and I'll test if it's a temperature issue.

He's not the only one, people aren't getting much with voltage tweaking from what I've been reading.

 

[Johnny Doe]

The only other recent card that overclocked this well was the GTX 460 I believe.

The 460 OC'ed well however it lacked shader strenght. Clock per clock, GF100 cards do better than 460's and 560 Ti's. Those are more budget oriented cards. A 470 for example has more vRAM/ROP's/shaders etc., which makes it gain more from OC'ing. Though, these 7900's hand all of them their asses from 900 Mhz to over a Ghz OC's...

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Yeah the only redeeming quality for last gen products right now is AMD priced the 7970 so high. You can get three GTX 470s for less than one 7970, and you only need two to beat a 7970.

 

[badb0y]

From MrK




He's not the only one, people aren't getting much with voltage tweaking from what I've been reading.

Interesting, either way 925-1125 is still a big overclock considering how well the 7970 scales with clock and far from a 'dud'.

 

[Johnny Doe]

Yeah the only redeeming quality for last gen products right now is AMD priced the 7970 so high. You can get three GTX 470s for less than one 7970, and you only need two to beat a 7970.

Yes, but you have to keep in mind that these are cream of the pie cards. A pair of them do beat it at stock (hell, I got quad 470's myself), but the 7970 OC's very well. It even puts those 470's that can get from 600 to 850-900 Mhz to shame. A single 7970 can compete with a 6990 once OC'ed, which is a card 470's lose to. So it's nothing to sleeze at.

Much less while doing that, it does it much more efficiently at 28nm, with the new goodies like the excellent Tessalation (which doesn't mean much but still).

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Only time will tell on that one.

johnny you can't run quad sli 470s, you already got called out on that at overclock.net. Otherwise I would have said you could get four 470s for less than one 7970, however it wouldn't matter since they can't do more than tri.

 

[Johnny Doe]

I'm not running "Quad SLi", I already fixed and claimed it. I got 4 myself (as I mentioned, "quad cards").

Either way, those cards are becoming a poor investigation. A single 7950 will likely be a superior choice to 470 SLi. You'd be shooting yourself in the foot by going 470 SLi over a 7900 (for future CF).

 

[BallaTheFeared]

From my tests 470 SLI is still 30-40% faster than a single overclocked 7970. Otherwise, aside from the pricing I would have picked one up, but it's a downgrade for me, let's not derail.

 

[Johnny Doe]

From my tests 470 SLI is still 30-40% faster than a single overclocked 7970. Otherwise, aside from the pricing I would have picked one up, but it's a downgrade for me, let's not derail.

Stock 470 SLi is in no way %30-40 faster than an OC'ed 7970. It's the other way around, an OC'ed 7970 would likely to be just as, if not faster than a pair of 470's. That card can get up there with dual-GPU solutions once OC'ed. I don't know where you come up with those figures coming as far as a 7970 against 470's.